Sunday, March 25, 2012

On the 13th anniversary of NATO's attack on then-Yugoslavia, I'm re-posting a piece that ran on Antiwar.com in March 2005. Even after the creation of the "Independent state of Kosovia" in 2008 - or perhaps even more so because of it - every word still applies.

An Evil Little War

[13*] Years Later, Kosovo Still Wrong

In the early hours of March 24, 1999, NATO began the bombing of what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. For some reason,
many in the targeted nation thought the name of the operation was "Merciful Angel." In fact, the attack was code-named "Allied Force" – a cold, uninspired and perfectly descriptive moniker. For, however much NATO spokesmen and the cheerleading press spun, lied, and fabricated to show otherwise (unfortunately, with altogether too much success), there was nothing noble in NATO’s aims. It attacked Yugoslavia for the same reason then-Emperor Bill Clinton enjoyed a quickie in the Oval Office: because it could.

Most of the criticism of the 1999 war has focused on its conduct (targeting practices, effects, "collateral damage") and consequences. But though the conduct of the war by NATO was atrocious and the consequences have been dire and criminal,
none of that changes the fact that by its very nature and from the very
beginning, NATO’s attack was a war of aggression: illegal, immoral, and
unjust; not "unsuccessful" or "mishandled," but just plain wrong.

Illegal

There is absolutely no question that the NATO attack in March 1999 was illegal. Article 2, section 4 of the UN Charter clearly says:

"All
Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat
or use of force against the territorial integrity or political
independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the
Purposes of the United Nations."

Some NATO members tried to
offer justification. London claimed the war was "justified" as a means
of preventing a "humanitarian catastrophe," but offered no legal grounds
for such a claim. Paris tried to create a tenuous link with UNSC
resolutions 1199 and 1203, which Belgrade was supposedly violating. However, NATO had deliberately bypassed the UN, rendering this argument moot.

"The
Security Council shall, where appropriate, utilize such regional
arrangements or agencies for enforcement action under its authority. But
no enforcement action shall be taken under regional
arrangements or by regional agencies without the authorization of the
Security Council." (emphasis added)

Furthermore, Article 103 (Chapter XVI)
asserts its primacy over any other regional agreement, so NATO’s actions would have been illegal under the UN Charter even if the
Alliance had an obligation to act in Kosovo. Even NATO’s own charter –
the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 – was violated by the act of war in March 1999:

"Article 1"The
Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations,
to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by
peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security
and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their
international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner
inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. […]"Article 7"This
Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in
any way the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties
which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security." (emphasis added)

Yugoslavia had not attacked any NATO members, nor indeed threatened the
security of any other country in the region; it was itself under an
attack by a terrorist, irredentist organization. What NATO did on March 24, 1999 was an act of aggression, a crime against peace.

Illegitimate

Perfectly
aware that the bombing was illegal, NATO leaders tried to create
justifications for it after the fact. They quickly seized upon a mass
exodus of Albanians from Kosovo, describing it as "ethnic cleansing" and
even "genocide."
But as recent testimonies of Macedonian medical workers who took care
of Albanian refugees suggest, the Western press was engaging in crude deceit, staging images of suffering refugees and peddling the most outrageous tall tales as unvarnished truth.

Stories abounded of mass murder, orchestrated expulsions, mass rapes, seizure of identity papers, even crematoria and mine shafts
filled with dead bodies. Little or no evidence was offered – and not
surprisingly, none found afterwards. The stories were part of a Big Lie, aimed to justify the intervention, concocted by professional propagandists, and delivered by the KLA-coached refugees. The KLA ran every camp in Macedonia and Albania, and there are credible allegations they organized the exodus in many instances. Albanians who did not play along were killed.

Eventually, the "genocide" and other atrocity stories were debunked
as propaganda. But they had served their purpose, conjuring a
justification for the war at the time. They had allowed NATO and its
apologists to claim the war – though "perhaps" illegal – was a moral and
legitimate affair. But there should be no doubt, it was neither.

Unjust

Even
if one can somehow gloss over the illegal, illegitimate nature of the
war and the lies it was based on, would the war still not be justified,
if only because it led to the return of refugees? Well, which
refugees? Certainly, many Kosovo Albanians – and quite a few from
Albania, it appears – came back, only to proceed to cleanse it
systematically of everyone else. Jews, Serbs, Roma, Turks, Ashkali,
Gorani - no community was safe from KLA terror, not even the Albanians themselves. Those suspected of "collaborating" were brutally murdered, often with entire families.

According to the Catholic doctrine of "just war,"
a war of aggression cannot be just. Even if one somehow fudges the
issue, "the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than
the evil to be eliminated." The evil conjured by NATO’s and KLA’s propaganda machine was indeed grave. But it was not real. In contrast, what took place after the war
– i.e., under the NATO/KLA occupation – is amply documented. At the
beginning of NATO’s aggression, there were fewer dead, fewer refugees,
less destruction, and more order than at any time since the beginning of
the occupation. NATO has replaced a fabricated evil with a very real evil of its own.

Monument to Evil

What began six years ago may have been Albright’s War
on Clinton’s watch, but both Albright and Clinton have been gone from
office for what amounts to a political eternity. For four years now,* the
occupation of Kosovo has continued with the blessing – implicit or
otherwise – of Emperor Bush II, who launched his own illegal war in Iraq. Kosovo is not a partisan, but an imperial issue; that is why there has been virtually no debate on it since the first missiles were fired.

Six years* to the day since NATO aircraft began their onslaught, Kosovo
is a chauvinistic, desolate hellhole. Serbian lives, property, culture,
and heritage been systematically destroyed, often right before the eyes of NATO "peacekeepers." Through it all, Imperial officials, Albanian lobbyists, and various presstitutes have been working overtime to paint a canvas that would somehow cover up the true horror of occupation.

Their "liberated" Kosovo represents everything that is wrong about the
world we live in. It stands as a monument to the power of lies, the
successful murder of law, and the triumph of might over justice. Such a
monument must be torn down, or else the entire world
may end up looking like Kosovo sometime down the line. If that’s what
the people in "liberal Western democracies" are willing to see happen,
then their civilization is well and truly gone.

But was Libya really liberated? Depends on your definition of liberty. If it involves keeping dark-skinned folk in cages and torturing them, then yes. Establishing Sharia law? Check. Desecrating Christian cemeteries, a la Kosovo(another one of Empire's "liberation" projects)? Ditto.

A few days ago, the "free and democratic" Libyans vandalized a number of gravestones of both Allied and Axis troops who died during the North African campaign of WW2. The campaign, pitting Italian and German (Afrika Korps) troops against the British and Commonwealth forces, had swept back and forth across today's Libya between 1940 and 1942, with some of the fiercest fighting around Tobruk and Benghazi. The cemeteries survived Libyan independence and Col. Gadhafi's reign, but not the NATO-installed "transitional" government.

Now, it is entirely possible that the "government" in Tripoli has nothing to do with this, and that it was the handiwork of local, Benghazi jihadists, noted veterans of the Iraqi insurgency. But that is precisely the constituency - for lack of a better word - which the Empire sought to "protect" by intervening. And now there is word that Cyrenaica (the area in question) is seeking "autonomy" from Tripoli.

Back in March 2011, as the "kinetic military action" became imminent, Justin Raimondo noted that Libya was a construct - three disparate provinces with different tribal composition. First under Ottoman rule (1551-1911), then under Italy (1911-1941), the regions were put together into the independent Kingdom of Libya (1951-1969) by the British. Colonel Gadhafi overthrew the monarchy in 1969, and ruled it until last year. And now the country is - predictably - coming apart.

Kosovo offers some clues about what might happen next. It, too, was a "humanitarian" intervention on behalf of a terrorist "liberation army," with the goal of "regime change" (replacing Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic with someone more to Empire's taste - i.e. the October 5 cabal and their current incarnation). The deliberate and systematic destruction of Serbian Orthodox churches and cemeteries began almost immediately, along with the murder and expulsion of ethnic Serbs, Roma, Turks and other "unwanted" communities. The UN and NATO occupation authorities did nothing to stop this persecution, which peaked in March 2004 with a 3-day pogrom. Not only was no one involved punished, the Albanians were rewarded in 2008 with US and EU recognition of their illegal declaration of independence (sure, the ICJ said it wasn't illegal, but only after torturing the facts).

The Empire now insists on inviolability of "Kosovo" borders, seeking to suppress the remaining Serbs who refuse to accept "independence". Yet carving out Kosovo clearly violated Serbia's borders, which the Empire had no trouble with. Chances are it will seek to suppress the "autonomy" in Cyrenaica, then - unless the separatists there are the actual clients of Empire, in which case the "transitional council" might be thrown under the bus.

In other words, there really are no principles involved; just power. For all the media prattle about saving innocent civilians and helping democracy and freedom, "humanitarian" interventions - be they "kinetic military actions" involving bombers or ground troops or "regime change" operations involving astroturf revolutionaries - are never actually humanitarian.

They have, however, involved murder, destruction, terrorism, organized crime, butchery, and of course, lies. Those are the fruits by which we ought to know them.